shift change 01-08-2024

Welcome to your shift change, reports from the off-going watch to the oncoming on anything interesting in privacy, security, or intelligence.

1. A lot of ink was spilled discussing the impact of the Russian hack of Ukraine’s Kyivstar (oh hey, Sandworm) but if you are the Russians, and you’ve put in the work and allocated the resources to build access to a critical capability in your adversaries telecommunications system—why burn it with an op that takes down comms for a few days? The access is almost always worth more than the impact of showing you were in there and had access, and then losing it.

2. Google is trying to kill the cookie—yay! (Ok, not yay as much as groan, because cookies are the heart of the surveillance capitalism model for the average user, but Google’s model locks you into Google’s ecosystems, continues to target you, and changes a known dynamic to a whole bunch of surprises to come, so maybe yay with freshly loaded shaker of salt.)

3. At the end of last week hackers got into some X accounts you wouldn’t expect them to—hi, Mandiant (or whoever you are)! I haven’t seen anything reliable on how the account takeover worked, whether Mandiant had MFA enabled or the usual questions after an incident like this, so if you see anything please send it my way.

4. Markup has recommended using a privacy screen, using Brave, and their easy-to-implement privacy and security protection continues with great advice—update!

5. Privacy isn’t always tech—sometimes it is how you design your home, and how you make sure people cannot see through the see-through parts of your home.

## The shift change is a collection of timely stories of interest in the security, privacy, and intelligence worlds. Thanks for reading, and feel free to reach out to will@signaltonoise.fyi for any questions, comments, or thoughts on items you’d like to see highlighted.